Blog Posts: Mia B. Ragent

Do tour guide licensing requirements violate the Free Speech Clause? In the past year, tour guides in two major tourist-destination cities challenged licensing schemes to two different results. For guides in the city of New Orleans, the Fifth Circuit held that the enforcement of tour guide regulations served an important governmental purpose and was within the confines of its police power to implement. Kagan v. City of New Orleans, La., 753 F.3d 560 (5th Cir. 2014), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 1403, 191 L. Ed. 2d 361 (2015). The D.C. Circuit struck down a similar Washington D.C. regulation on the grounds that the government interest was not great enough, nor was the regulation sufficiently tailored to pass an intermediate scrutiny test. Edwards v. D.C., 755 F.3d 996 (D.C. Cir. 2014). The D.C. Circuit opinion concluded that while content-neutral, the licensing scheme was not implemented in the least restrictive way possible, a requirement for even facially-neutral laws. Id.Read More... (Unlicensed and Unheard: Stifling Segway Speech)No Comments | Posted by Mia B. Ragent on Mon. February 22, 2016 12:18 PMCategories: Court Rulings, Freedom of Speech

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